if wishes were fishes
by Rupzydaisy
Summary: "Think about it, me and you, setting whole universes to rights. We could do so much. I was right before, when I said the universe had been waiting for me. But now I've got one of my own."


if wishes were fishes

The Norwegian loft bedroom flooded with bright light and there was a fuzziness that filled her ears. The Doctor blinked and finally her surroundings settled into an endless white space. The homely wooden panels and the slanted ceiling had been replaced with a row of triangle shaped arches. It lacked sound and smell, but there was a hum of life in the very air that made her skin prickle and her second heart, the left one, thud faster.

She glanced around, rubbing her eyes, and saw there was nothing else there except a single figure underneath the final arch standing with its arms crossed waiting for her. A very familiar figure with long, straight ginger hair wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans, and an unmistakably warm smile of her face.

"Hello, you." The DoctorDonna took a step towards her with her hands jammed into her pockets, clearly delighted to see her.

The Doctor frowned, but her lips wavered between in their natural desire to smile back. "Oh, it's you. I'm not entirely surprised, I think."

"Really? Better watch it, Spacewoman." The Doctor winced and the DoctorDonna nodded her head, appraising the Time Lord in front of her. " _Spacewoman._ Yeah, doesn't have the same ring to it, not as snappy."

She clacked her teeth together and waited for the Doctor to reply, expecting to instantly fall back into old habits of a half-known person.

It was tempting. The DoctorDonna had been half-her and half-Donna, and she knew her well, even if she had only lived for a few, meagre, shining hours. The Doctor gave a nonchalant shrug and began to walk through the row of triangular arches towards her. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't quite get rid of the burning curiosity she felt as she took each step. The DoctorDonna with the face of Donna Noble looked back at her with a gleam in her eye that made her think that she knew exactly how she felt.

But it wasn't possible.

"I like the new look." She said as she rocked back on the heels of her boots, tipping her chin up and expecting a friendly reaction.

The Doctor swept a hand over her coat and tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. "Thanks, I'm getting used to it all. I'm not keen on yours though. You don't have to play this game with me. I won't fall for it."

"This isn't a game!" The DoctorDonna quickly stomped forward in anger with her face stopping short of a few centimeters in front of the Doctor's nose.

The Doctor backed up, throwing her hands up gently. She tilted her head and offered an apologetic smile.

"Okay. Come on, I don't mean it like that. It's just, well, you were my universe's biggest regret. It makes sense that you're here in this form. The DoctorDonna, and all the wonders that could ever be, in a place like this where _literally_ anything could be."

She swept her arm up to gesture at the other woman, and watched the DoctorDonna relax a fraction. Her frown crinkled the skin around her green eyes.

"You warming up to the idea of staying then?"

"No chance!" The Doctor scoffed.

Then she seemed to understand the weight of her words and her expression softened. She reached up to tentatively poke the DoctorDonna's shoulder with a glimmer in her eyes. "But that doesn't mean I don't like the idea. You must be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, the most complex, potentially brilliant, wondrous thing! A conscious universe."

The Doctor broke off from her awe to give a yelp as her hands flickered in and out of being. The shape and colour of her fingers changed and the feeling disappeared out of them entirely. She drew them back immediately and clenched her fists.

"You're a clever thing, Solitract." Her voice dropped low as she focussed on grounding herself and not panicking while her body lost its matter because she was trapped in an anti-matter plane of existence.

"I do try." The DoctorDonna flicked her head magnanimously.

The Doctor's voice turned brittle, "Try harder. I'm still enough to destabilise you. I don't think you can work around the fact that my presence here could kill us both."

The DoctorDonna shook her head, "Think about it, me and you, setting whole universes to rights. We could do so much. I was right before, when I said the universe had been waiting for me. But now I've got one of my own."

"It had been waiting for _her._ " The Doctor replied, taking care to meet the Solitract's gaze. She held it for a long moment, staring it down. "You could have been anyone. You could have taken any form. I'm old, really really old. I've had a lot of friends, I've loved a lot of people, so what I really want to know is why'd you choose that face?"

The DoctorDonna raised her hands up and suddenly they were in the TARDIS. The Doctor flipped her head back and forth, taking in the old coral desktop with the golden and navy hues across the thick struts reaching up to the ceiling. She quickly circled the console, running a hand over the levers and switches, where everything was as it had been.

"Why?" The Doctor demanded again.

"I wanted to show you me, in the best way you could understand. I am possibility. I am unceasing, without limit. I am beyond the laws that govern your universe."

"Granny Five was right about you." The Doctor huffed out a little chuckle, and leant back against the solid metal rail wondering what the woman with a penchant for ancient legends would think about this.

"All of time and space you promised me. Twice over now! We could do impossible things together. You could learn so much."

The DoctorDonna pulled a lever to set the time rota chugging upwards and downwards. The whir echoed inside the TARDIS and she let out an excited whoop of joy.

The Doctor's hearts sunk a little further, because she knew it was true. "If only it were possible."

The DoctorDonna sighed and raised her hands up again. This time when she lowered them, the TARDIS interior was replaced by the white expanse once more.

"You could stay anyway," she replied bluntly.

The air buckled and the Doctor staggered sideways, arms akimbo to try and grasp onto something to keep her balance. Another wave of antimatter wracked across her and for a split second she didn't have toes or the ability to see the colours red or green.

"I think I can taste gravity." The Doctor's eyes widened. She felt the snap of time and then the sudden vastness of everything.

She took a deep breath and smiled at the face of her old, too-brief friend, "You've been one of my biggest regrets. I am so sorry for not being able to do more for you, you know. I couldn't save you then, but you can help save the both of us now."

"You were my mate, my best mate. Why won't you help me now?" The DoctorDonna accused as she crossed her arms again.

Her leather jacket creased tightly at her elbows, crinkling where her fingers wrapped tightly around her arms. Her words leaked out pain and loneliness, and the Doctor cringed to hear the sound again. It had been heartbreaking the first time, taking the DoctorDonna and pushing her far down into the back of Donna's mind to sleep for the rest of her human life.

She stepped closer and closer, approaching slowly but surely, despite the other woman's tear-filled glare.

"You're a conscious universe, and I'll bet that you've got a conscience. Because if you've got an inkling of what my friend the DoctorDonna was about, then you'd know what you have to do."

The DoctorDonna backed away but her shoulders were weighed down with resignation. "I have to let you go. But I don't want to."

She shook her head, stubbornness digging in and the expanse shuddered in revolt as the fabric of the universe continued to crumble.

"I don't want to do it. I miss you, I miss it all. I want more."

The Doctor persisted, stretching out a hand to her, "You want to belong, and I get that, I really do. There's nothing worse than feeling alone in the universe, especially I guess, if you _are_ the universe. But if we both want to survive, then you need to send me back."

The DoctorDonna stood still as another ripple of antimatter wrenched through the air around them and took the breath from the Doctor's lungs. There was a look of pure determination on her face, and the feeling of awe bubbled up in the pit of her stomach, because Granny Five knew how to tell a story, and she always begun the Solitract myth by explaining how _things_ didn't fit right, how time and space and matter just couldn't come together in the presence of the Solitract. She had done her best to describe how this indescribable, ancient, wondrous force existed and then was exiled, but never once did it occur to anyone that this sentient vastness would feel loneliness and pain from a separation that extended beyond the walls of the universe.

The Doctor stepped a little closer and put her hands on the DoctorDonna's shoulders, because she had told the Solitract the truth, about loving more and losing more, and she knew a little of living longer than most and leaving behind the people that mattered. With another sigh, she leaned forwards and hugged her. The DoctorDonna stood frozen for a long moment before she slackened and slowly raised her own arms up to mirror the hug.

"I'll still be your mate. And this time I mean you, Solitract. You." The Doctor slowly relinquished her hold and threw her arms out into the blank expanse, "I wish we could exist here, together. I wish I could get to know you, understand exactly what you are, because you truly are incredible. But no matter what, or where I am, I'm your friend."

"I know. I'll remember you forever, and beyond that too."

With a wry smile, the Solitract lifted her arm slowly, hand outstretched and fingers reaching out for the Doctor, and then she pushed her palm through the air. The Doctor smiled at her as she was slammed off her feet backwards, passing through the portal out of the Solitract's universe and then the invisible walls between them juddered one final time with the latent possibility before they stilled forever.


End file.
